Yes, lets welcome the change that is gonna be completely utterly broken on certain fights, while barely noticeable on the regular fights. The change that is gonna cause a riptide of waves after waves of complaints against paladins being utterly OP and broken, causing further changes into the current state of paladin tanking that is the most involving and skill rewarding it has ever been.

This change opens up for paladins to do absolutely insane things, and on certain fights we are just gonna be beasts.

Yeah, when I saw that start to the post, I figured he was meaning it in terms of "I welcome the change because it's a huge fucking buff on add/exploitable fights". Then I kept reading...

Even though, with the 'new' GC, it does not change that the effects of the actual dodge/parry stats are still shit. The only thing that changes is that they give us the ability to completely abuse some fights, which changes our rotation into 2 buttons (AS/GC). Yeah, that sounds fun. Add in Sacred Shield and we got 3 buttons to press for those aoe fights.

This change is one of the least interesting ones I have seen, it only serves to cause further rage against paladins, encourage boring and weird gameplay, i.e. pulling even trash mobs to bosses so you can sit and spam only AS the entire fight, while making our damage reduction and dps completely broken with 100% sotr uptime.

Though, I DO wonder, once we reach 21250 and hit/exp hardcaps, picking up avoid/mastery gear may not be a bad thing. I know some folks (*cough*YOU*cough*) will still advocate crit, and that WILL be a viable strat for sure, but after capping the good stats, avoid/mastery could be a decent option as well, esp in 25m.

The fact is, you say you played since vanilla. Dodge and parry were never really desirable stats, they where just, the least shitty ones. Just check the golden days of CTC cap in Cata, reach that 102.4%, sure we wanted dodge and parry to reach the CTC cap, but if I could change all my dodge/parry into mastery for block, I would have done that in a blink of an eye, dodge/parry was simply not desirable, but it was what we were left with, since obviously not all pieces could have mastery/mastery on them.

Pretty much. Vanilla tank gear WAS tier gear, since all you could tank on was a warrior. There was no concept of hit/expertise, unless you counted Maladath or other +wpn items (which the smart ones of us used). There was no hit available, which played havoc on fights like 4horsemen, hence the addition of the set bonus on original Dreadnaught. Block value (OMG the OP Sapphiron trinket from Naxx40; RIP old friend!) was amazing, but was gutted/removed going into LK. All we HAD was +Def to stack to 440, and then dodge/parry/armor. And even then, additional +def was STILL better than D/P. BC wasn't much different, outside of the 540 cap, and the addition of more +armor items. D/P was still just the wallpaper; boring and bland, and was simply there...never desired. Hit became important, at least.

LK axed defense skill, but added in Mastery. Using a THRILLING combination of D/P/B, we shot for CTC cap and then stacked stam. Enthralling gameplay. Stand there and get hit til the boss dies. Wonder why there is a tank shortage? Not that things got better in Cata... In fact, it just got WORSE, since unhittable tanks weren't dying, so they had to ramp up damage so severely that it made non-block tanks a high liability. Well played, avoidance.

Finally, we get some semblance of tank parity in MoP with the abolition of CTC capping as a possibility. Granted, the parity is lacking in the DPS department, but this is precisely BECAUSE of avoidance. The 2 tanks (War/BDK) that are stuck without "proper" use of non-traditional secondary stats for AM usage are at a disadvantage because they are saddled with dodge and parry, causing DPS to suffer. This is attempting to be band-aided in 5.4, but it really won't do much to change the tank meta. So, now that we (as Paladins, anyway) finally have choices, a fun and engaging tank playstyle, and meaningful contriubtions to the group other than "get hit in the face for 8 minutes", people want to go back to the dark ages?

I'll never understand it...

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

Though, I DO wonder, once we reach 21250 and hit/exp hardcaps, picking up avoid/mastery gear may not be a bad thing. I know some folks (*cough*YOU*cough*) will still advocate crit, and that WILL be a viable strat for sure, but after capping the good stats, avoid/mastery could be a decent option as well, esp in 25m.

To be fair, I am not certain I will advocate crit anymore. Seeing as the main reason of that was dodge/parry actually decreased your dps by allowing you took fewer alabaster shield procs, though now when that is nerfed and dodge/parry improved, I find it very likely going for dodge/parry is superior simply because they will provide a dps increase now rather than a decrease, aswell as a lot of holy power.

Will wait for things to go live before delving deeper into the matter, but as you say, going for dodge/parry after haste cap seems to be a likely option.

Should be noted though that is not because of the actual dodges and parries, only for the dps increase and HoPo regen increase, and of course abusing whatever fight possible.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

It was the Cata pre patch that removed Def and added Mastery, and dear god was tanking boring 696 rotation anyone? And it didn't even matter if you executed it efficiently or not as it had next to no survivability linked to it and tanks did shit dps...
MoP tanking is the most fun I've had in game.

OT: when I first saw the patch notes I was a little pissed at the nerfs then realised it wasn't too bad and could actually be interesting on some fights.
But now the more I think about it the more I think both the GC and BH changes could be brokenly op on some fights leading blizz to some poorly thought out nerfs on week 2 of live :/

"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it." -- Terry Pratchett

To be fair, I am not certain I will advocate crit anymore. Seeing as the main reason of that was dodge/parry actually decreased your dps by allowing you took fewer alabaster shield procs, though now when that is nerfed and dodge/parry improved, I find it very likely going for dodge/parry is superior simply because they will provide a dps increase now rather than a decrease, aswell as a lot of holy power.

Will wait for things to go live before delving deeper into the matter, but as you say, going for dodge/parry after haste cap seems to be a likely option.

Should be noted though that is not because of the actual dodges and parries, only for the dps increase and HoPo regen increase, and of course abusing whatever fight possible.

well i guess it all comes down to how much dodge/parry we get from those ratings compared to crit (from a dps pov) or from mastery (from a survivability pov). With the ever present harsh DR on avoidance im thinking crit/mastery/stam will still be the go to next best stat.

well i guess it all comes down to how much dodge/parry we get from those ratings compared to crit (from a dps pov) or from mastery (from a survivability pov). With the ever present harsh DR on avoidance im thinking crit/mastery/stam will still be the go to next best stat.

I guess it will depends if we will prioritise dps or survival.

I figure it will be mastery>stam from a survival PoV.
The crit vs dodge/parry is more interesting trade-off. Multi target naturally going to favor dodge/parry.
The thing I find interesting is that if you can reach enough dodge/parry to get 100% SotR coverage, dodge/parry can actually become quite valuable from survival point of view aswell. As I mentioned in the other thread, imagine having the trinket from ToT that gives mastery on dodges, having constantly say 40% avoidance, 100% sotr uptime, 80% block and 75% SotR damage reduction, that would just be insane.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

It was the Cata pre patch that removed Def and added Mastery, and dear god was tanking boring 696 rotation anyone? And it didn't even matter if you executed it efficiently or not as it had next to no survivability linked to it and tanks did shit dps...
MoP tanking is the most fun I've had in game.

OT: when I first saw the patch notes I was a little pissed at the nerfs then realised it wasn't too bad and could actually be interesting on some fights.
But now the more I think about it the more I think both the GC and BH changes could be brokenly op on some fights leading blizz to some poorly thought out nerfs on week 2 of live :/

But yes, all of these people screaming bloody murder on the forums (here and official) about the GC and BH "nerfs" haven't done the math. We're actually getting [situationally] buffed. Lack of foresight is typical.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

I figure it will be mastery>stam from a survival PoV.
The crit vs dodge/parry is more interesting trade-off. Multi target naturally going to favor dodge/parry.
The thing I find interesting is that if you can reach enough dodge/parry to get 100% SotR coverage, dodge/parry can actually become quite valuable from survival point of view aswell. As I mentioned in the other thread, imagine having the trinket from ToT that gives mastery on dodges, having constantly say 40% avoidance, 100% sotr uptime, 80% block and 75% SotR damage reduction, that would just be insane.

trinket procs aside, if the amount of extra avaoidance we get by going for parry (after haste/hit/exp caps) is "minimal", then we may as well just ignore it and get the mastery/crit stats instead which doesnt suffer from DR.

trinket procs aside, if the amount of extra avaoidance we get by going for parry (after haste/hit/exp caps) is "minimal", then we may as well just ignore it and get the mastery/crit stats instead which doesnt suffer from DR.

That trinket does look interesting now though

Yeah, I have been trying to twist my mind around different priorities. One that crossed my mind on multi-target fights was using that trinket and dodge>crit>parry simply to get that proc more often. Speaking strictly between avoidance and crit of course.

Though yes, as you say, DR is something we need to bear in mind, but sitting at 0 dodge and 0 parry the DR is not really of great concern right now for me.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Saishan

Mastery does suffer from DR now doesn't it? Not nearly as hash as D/P tho.

Edit: or was that just the block portion of mastery ?

It suffers from a cap (the SotR part), not dr.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

trinket procs aside, if the amount of extra avaoidance we get by going for parry (after haste/hit/exp caps) is "minimal", then we may as well just ignore it and get the mastery/crit stats instead which doesnt suffer from DR.

That trinket does look interesting now though

Ehhh, I'm not so sure I'm ready to jump on the crit train just yet. With the bolus of add/MT fights in SoO, I'm really thinking that avoidance (parry, anyway) will shape up to be a serious contender after Hit/Exp/Haste cap.

Not only for the fact that avoidance excels on MT/add fights in terms of actual tank performance, but also the fact that it's value is directly increased by each additional incoming hit, in terms of GC. 1% extra parry, on a fight with boss + 3 adds means 1.2% more GC procs an HoPo. That's not inconsequential; the damage from the GC procs may be about even with what you'd get with the same amount of crit due to ratings required, but the HoPo influx is the x-factor there.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

Ehhh, I'm not so sure I'm ready to jump on the crit train just yet. With the bolus of add/MT fights in SoO, I'm really thinking that avoidance (parry, anyway) will shape up to be a serious contender after Hit/Exp/Haste cap.

Not only for the fact that avoidance excels on MT/add fights in terms of actual tank performance, but also the fact that it's value is directly increased by each additional incoming hit, in terms of GC. 1% extra parry, on a fight with boss + 3 adds means 1.2% more GC procs an HoPo. That's not inconsequential; the damage from the GC procs may be about even with what you'd get with the same amount of crit due to ratings required, but the HoPo influx is the x-factor there.

Kinda what I am thinking aswell. I have not really checked much about to 5.4 fights, but dodge/parry seems reasonable if there are a lot of adds simply for the SotR uptime and dps.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

From the EJ thread:
"While Mastery itself does not suffer from Diminishing Returns, the amount of Block% you get from Mastery will be reduced by DR."

Not that it really matters just wanted to prove to myself I wasn't completely forgetting what i'd read.

Yeah, I have no clue about that to be honset, never cared about the block part from mastery, it is imo quite useless. The interesting part of mastery is the SotR reduction.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

im not convinced that block from mastery does suffer from DR tbh....ill have to check in game at some point, unless someone here can blindly says it does/doesnt.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Firefly33

Though yes, as you say, DR is something we need to bear in mind, but sitting at 0 dodge and 0 parry the DR is not really of great concern right now for me.

hmmmmm, we get a shit ton of parry from strength already though.........im under the impression that you'll already be suffering from fairly high DR from that alone despite having 0 dodge/parry rating from gear. Perhaps parry from strength and parry from parry dont share DR? doubt that though.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Nairobi

Ehhh, I'm not so sure I'm ready to jump on the crit train just yet. With the bolus of add/MT fights in SoO, I'm really thinking that avoidance (parry, anyway) will shape up to be a serious contender after Hit/Exp/Haste cap.

Not only for the fact that avoidance excels on MT/add fights in terms of actual tank performance, but also the fact that it's value is directly increased by each additional incoming hit, in terms of GC. 1% extra parry, on a fight with boss + 3 adds means 1.2% more GC procs an HoPo. That's not inconsequential; the damage from the GC procs may be about even with what you'd get with the same amount of crit due to ratings required, but the HoPo influx is the x-factor there.

no - im not a huge fan of crit yet either tbh. Honestly i think ill be going down the mastery road still in 5.4 unless i get convinced otherwise. how many multi boss/add fights are there in SoO? cant be that many

hmmmmm, we get a shit ton of parry from strength already though.........im under the impression that you'll already be suffering from fairly high DR from that alone despite having 0 dodge/parry rating from gear. Perhaps parry from strength and parry from parry dont share DR? doubt that though.

That's what I've been thinking I got this macro off someone on maintankadin at the start of MoP and if it still holds true I'm suffering from Parry DR much more than Dodges.

Is that macro not from back in Cata? Not that being old makes it incorrect, but I thought that the macro was designed only to correct the imbalance between dodge and parry RATINGS, not total VALUES. I could be (and likely am) off-base on that, though, as I've never used gear with avoidance on it to the point that I even had to consider what to balance.

But, if that's accurate, then the sheer amount of STR (which is now MUCH higher than in Cata, obv) means we'd have a higher innate Parry rating, which would throw off the balancing of the script. At which point it'd be giving inaccurate results.

TL;DR - I KNOW that Dodge DRs much more harshly than Parry, so unless you have a shitload of both Parry rating AND STR, I'm unsure that you'd be better off stacking dodge at any point, ever.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

I think "ideal" ratio should be taken with a [huge] grain of salt, personally. The macro was designed originally to compensate for large stat pools of the 2 avoidances. I've got ~400 of each (IIRC), so it should be considered only if applicable.

Now, does the parry contribution from STR decay at the same rate as parry rating DRs?

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)